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Tested: Opening a beer bottle with an iPad charger

The Interwebs go crazy over a trick that turns an iPad charger into a bottle opener, so we put it to the test.

Sharon Profis Vice President of Content
Sharon Profis is a vice president of content.
Sharon Profis
2 min read

Sharon Vaknin/CNET

What started as a TwitPic soon spread like wildfire all over the Web, getting picked up by Apple blogs like 9to5Mac and Business Insider. Someone, presumably inebriated, decided it would be clever to use an iPad adapter an an impromptu bottle opener.

The photo, which simply shows the adapter being placed on the bottle cap, paints a seemingly ideal picture of a handy piece of tech being used in unconventional ways.

As a beer-drinking technophile who also happens to like crazy DIYs like this, I gave it a try.

It only took seconds for me to regret doing so. Here I was, using an iPad adapter to pry off a bottle cap, when an unexpected crack filled my ears. The plastic, circular part of the adapter isn't strong enough after all. (Nothing a little superglue can't fix, but still.)

Did I stop there? Sure didn't. Hard-headed and filled with perseverance, I grabbed my MacBook charger, removed the head (plug part), took a deep breath and...

Nope. Luckily, I quickly retreated when I sensed the adapter was going to snap off.

Fellow CNETer Josh Lowensohn, however, yielded more-positive results. In a couple seconds, he was able to effortlessly uncap a bottle with an iPad charger using the method pictured above. So, I tried it again with another charger and it worked! Check out the video footage.

Ladies and gentlemen, for the sake of your chargers, beer, and reputation, please use caution when using the iPad charger as a bottle opener.

If you need some alternatives, here are 31 ways to open a beer without a bottle opener. Then again, there's always a good ol' bottle opener.

Cheers!

Updated May 4, 2012, at 3:38 p.m. PT to note success using the described method.